The present embodiments relate to the field of fencing for a hazardous environment.
A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, property and environment. Most hazards are dormant or potential with a theoretical risk of harm. However, once a hazard becomes active, the hazard may create an emergency situation. Hazard may occur in manufacturing plants, mining environment, and process plants. An environment where a hazard is prone to occur is termed as ‘hazardous environment’. For example, hazard may arise from field objects in the hazardous environment such as boiler, furnace, X-ray devices, slopes in mines, vehicles, toxic fumes and poisonous materials. In the hazardous environment, there may be a plurality of areas or zones that are likely to be affected when the hazard occurs. These areas or zones are known as hazardous zones. Typically, the hazardous zones in the hazardous environment are manually defined based on severity of risk from the hazard that may occur.
It is desirable that personnel and other property such as moving robots or field objects present in the hazardous environment are safe from hazardous zones in the hazardous environment. In order to provide safety in the hazardous environment, typically each hazardous zone is guarded using a fence. The fence encompassing the hazardous zone may be a physical fence made of plastic, metal, or wood, Laser curtains, and the like. These types of fences are static (e.g., area and shape remain constant over a period of time). In the hazardous environment, severity of potential hazard varies in real time with change in real-time operational parameter values of field objects. For example, severity of hazard when a boiler is non-operational is less or zero. In such case, there is no need to define a hazardous zone or a fence covering such hazardous zone. However, when the boiler is operational and temperature and pressure of steam in the boiler is high, the severity of hazard is high. In such case, there is a need to define hazardous zone and also a fence covering the hazardous zone.
Currently, hazardous zones are manually defined assuming severity of hazard and static fence is built around such hazardous zones. In real-time, area of the hazardous zone may be greater than the area of the fence. Also, there are many areas in the hazardous environment for which hazardous zones are not defined manually. This may lead to damage to the property and life of the personnel in the hazardous environment when the hazard become active since the hazardous zones are manually defined and the fence is static.